Mechanisms for efficient shared-memory, lock-based synchronization
Alain Kägi, James R. Goodman · 1999
Efficient locking synchronization primitives are essential for achieving high performance in fine-grain, shared-memory parallel programs. One function of locking primitives is to enable exclusive access to shared data and critical sections of code. In this dissertation, I make the following six contributions. (1) I propose a framework, the synchronization period, in which to reason about the inefficiencies of locking primitives. (2) I identify four previously proposed locking mechanisms (local spinning, queue-based locking, collocation, and synchronous prefetch) and uses them to classify existing locking primitives according to which of these mechanisms they incorporate. (3) With detailed simulations, I show the extent to which these four mechanisms can improve the performance of sharedmemory programs. I evaluate the space of these mechanisms using sixteen synchronization constructs, which are formed from six base types of locks (test&set, test&test&set, MCS, LH, M, and QOLB). I show t...